Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Moon and Pleiades

 


Moon and Pleiades.
Set up: TLAPO80/489 f/6 on EQ8 and Nikon D7500
Bracketing and HDR using CS4

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Sun March 29 - One hour before partial solar eclipse

Imaging the Sun one hour before the Partial Solar Eclipse. This test was done at my home before moving to the public perfornace.





Partial Solar Eclipse

The partial solar eclipse imaged during public performance at "Het Moment" (Abbey of Averbode). I used my TLAPO80/480 f/6 with ND3.8 solar filter, IR/UV cut filter and OIII filter.

Editing using CS4 after conversion to DNG format. 




Friday, March 28, 2025

Sun in H-alpha Sol'Ex

Both seeing and transparency was poor but the objective was to optimize fps and testing connectivity of USB hub.

First I fine tuned the ROI as small as possible; with the used setting the ROI for H-alpha is now 125pixels. 
Next I changed SharpCap settings: memory usage for camera maximized and camera control setting all max eg. Turbo on.
WIth and without the USB hub I was able to get to 400pfs and keep it stable during capturing.

Setting
TLAPO80/480 with Sol'Ex pro and 678MM camera
Herschel Wedge
USB hub connected with Camera and external SSD
Software: SharpCap, Inti and CS4




Sunday, March 23, 2025

Sol'ex images inside outside

I reworked my Sol'Ex images of H-alpha, H-beta and CaIIH from March 9 to get the sun inside outside.
In this way the prominences are now in the inner circle in stead of on the outside solar disk.






Saturday, March 22, 2025

Space Weather Training STCE

This week I could attend the Space Weather training at STCE (Solar-Terrestrial Center of Excellence @Uccle Belgium). This introductionary training was open for all amateurs of the astronomy club VVS. In total 11 people participated the course.

The three main trainers (Petra, Elke and Jan) gave very well, detailed and interactive information about all aspects of space weather. Beside classroom lectures we participated a space weather forecast, visited the Uccle Solar Eqautorial Table (USET), Library of the Royal Observatorum and the headquarters of Solar radio-astronomy for Humain. 

A lot of information was given and how to understand the different parameters and how they are measured. I'm looking back to a succesfull two day training. Thx to STCE and all trainers. 


Attending Space Weather forecast meeting

Selfie with Walter in the Library

Library of Royal Observatorium

USET 

USET Control Room

Historical drawing with huge sunspot

The Solar Dome

Exercise 

left to right Ivo, Roel, Stijn,Pascal, Fleur, Niels, Claude, Jan, Petra, Walter, Elke, Rudy, Ann, Ruben